Ode to Eliot - Sara Dowse as Charlotte is Moved #1 2 December

Another expat yank

lamented coffee spoons

I have my own gripe

nearly a century later

there are phone calls

intricately prompted

promoting the very service 

that's keeping me in line.

Oh that line. Wanting to

help me, we are here

to help you and we

value your custom

and your valuable time.

Then there are the forms

devouring time

poised above the paper

pencil-tip quizzing

chewing the rubber

spitting out time with

white out for corrections

to impossibly noteworthy

Questions.

We all drink coffee now

nothing exclusive about it

nothing masculine either

like it was in those wood-

panelled clubs.

Paper cups could even be

recycled from those

unanswerable questions

about the relative merits

of slow drip methods

for wasting expendable lives.

Before I was expatiating

I thought buying was exciting

my friend shopped at Saks sometimes

she had blonde hair

a Swedish mother and very

large breasts that I envied.

Coffee spoons, tea trolleys

bus stops and parking spots

Bundy clocks and Bunjy jumps

Tell me, please tell me

who cares.